Books | Ear Training

Sight reading and ear training are two of the most important skills for any musician. Consequently, they should be developed systematically with performance, technical and theoretical skills from the time that keyboard study begins. As new concepts are introduced in the LESSONS book, they are reinforced visually and aurally in SIGHT READING AND EAR TRAINING. These books can be used with equal success in private and group lessons. The reading exercises are based on the premise that students develop secure reading skills by first playing in specific patterns and gradually moving out of these patterns. The recognition of intervals is crucial to the development of good reading habits. In addition, students must be able to quickly identify individual notes and patterns (melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic).

The Ear Training Books reinforce each concept presented in the Lesson Books and specifically focus on the training and development of the ear. Rhythmic, melodic and intervallic concepts are drilled throughout each book and each page is designed to be completed using approximately five minutes of the lesson time.

Aural Skills in Context takes a comprehensive approach to sight singing, ear training, and rhythm practice. By featuring real examples from classical music to folk and jazz, and offering melodies with their related harmonies, the text parallels the full Music Theory curriculum and reinforces the relevance of aural skills to students' other classes, as well as their performance and listening interests. In addition to a wide variety of partial and complete excerpts, Aural Skills in Context also provides a wealth of activities that range far beyond simply singing the melodies or writing them down from dictation, giving instructors and students the opportunity to engage in improvisation; performance in multiple voices; switching between melody and accompanying lines; creating new melodies above a given bass line; or even an additional "obbligato" voice above the given melody or between the outer voices.

* Rhythmic, harmonic, and melodic drills accompany musical examples and solidify students' understanding of the position of every pitch within the tonal context* "Expanding Repertoires" sections include listening and dictation-type exercises that allow students to engage in listening beyond the traditional examples* "Contextual Listening" assignments are accompanied with streaming audio at various tempos and an online mixer for balancing musical parts on the companion website, www.oup.com/us/jonesshaftel * Designed so that it may be used with Finale Smartmusic, an inexpensive software program that enables students to receive immediate feedback on their sight singing, while keeping a record of their progress.

Excerpt from Ear-Training and Sight-Singing Applied to Elementary Musical Theory: A Practical and CoÃ¶rdinated Course for Schools and Private Study

The purpose of this book is to present the Elements of Music in a direct and concise manner; to show as simply as possible the reason for these things; to give the pupil material for practice and instruct him how to use this material.

Each step is presented in three ways: first, exercises to be written; second, exercises for dictation to be used in Ear-training; third, exercises for Sight-reading.

Section A of each Lesson contains the exercises for written work; Sections B and C the exercises for Ear-training and Sight-reading.

In class-work it has been found practical to use three fifty-minute periods a week, devoting a period to each Section.

Following is the plan of the book, showing the development of the work and the order in which the factors are taken up.

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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The Annotated Instructor's Edition of "Music for Ear Training, 2nd Edition", is intended as a supplement to a course in Ear Training; is prepared with notes for the instructor and suggestions to the student; and is comprised of a spiral-bound workbook and CD-ROM (Version 2.0, which includes 8 new units w/ melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic dictation exercises which provide graded study in post-tonal and jazz idioms and a re-designed interface optimized for Macintosh OS X and Windows XP. Note: CD-ROM has its own ISBN:0-534-62768-4

(BH Kodaly). All of the musical examples in Sound Thinking are drawn from folk songs and art music encompassing a wide range of historical eras. The examples can be used for developing a variety of skills including sight-reading, dictation, musical memory, rhythmic reading, formal analysis, part singing, and improvisation.